Lehigh University's Zoellner Arts Center will kick off its season with a rock show, it was announced Tuesday.

Well, it contains rock music, and it's a show.

“Rock of Ages,” a five-time Tony Award-nominated musical that features 1980s songs and is being made into a movie starring Tom Cruise and Alec Baldwin, will kick off the 16th season of Lehigh University’s Zoellner Arts Center.

The announcement Tuesday was made to a crowd at Zoellner’s annual Fun in the Footlights celebration. Despite being held more than two months later than last year’s celebration, the event didn’t include an announcement of the headliner for Gala 2012, Zoellner’s primary fundraiser.

Zoellner Artistic Director Deborah Sacarakis said she hopes the artist, about whom she said she’s excited, will accept an offer and the announcement will be ready in a few days.

“I’m disappointed I can’t announce it tonight,” she said. “It’s close but no cigar.”

The gala will be held Oct. 20. “I can’t tell you who it is, but mark your calendars. I assure you you’ll have a good time,” Sacarakis said.

Last year’s headliner was 15-time Grammy Award winner Tony Bennett.

“Rock of Ages” will hit the Zoellner stage Sept. 8. Set in Los Angeles in 1987, it features 28 songs such as “Renegade” by Styx; “Don’t Stop Believin’ “ by Journey; “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi; Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is,” and others by Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Steve Perry, Poison, Asia and more.

The show has been on Broadway since 2009 and had its first national tour in 2010.

“We always start the season with a high-energy performance that’s pop-oriented,” Sacarakis said.

Single tickets for “Rock of Ages” will go on sale in May to Zoellner subscribers and in July to the public. For more information, go to www.zoellnerartscenter.org.

The website Internet Movie Database says a film version starring Russell Brand and Julianne Hough is in post-production, with a June 15 release date.

Sacarakis called the “Rock of Ages” announcement “a really, really itty bitty preview of the season.” She said Zoellner’s upcoming programming will be “very varied. It might look random, but there’s a method to our madness.”

She said among the varied disciplines and multiple genres and cultural offerings — all with “an eye toward incorporating the community” — will be a March 2013 show by Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, a Germany company that will play the composer’s Fifth Piano Concerto and Fifth Symphony.

Zoellner Administrative Director J. Andrew Cassano, who took over the position in November, said the just-completed 15th season brought 22,000 people to music and theater presentations at Zoellner. But that represented just half of the 170 events at the center in the past season, he said. The other half was off-campus clients.

“There is so much coming this season, programs from all over the world,” Cassano said. “I’d say to give everything a chance. You might not know the names when you hear them, but in five seconds, they show the audience.”

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JOHN J. MOSER has been around long enough to have seen the original Ramones in a small club in New Jersey, U2 from the fourth row of a theater and Bob Dylan's born-again tours. But he also has the number for All-American Rejects' Nick Wheeler on his cell phone, wrote the first story ever done on Jack's Mannequin and hung out in Wiz Khalifa's hotel room.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

JODI DUCKETT: As The Morning Call's assistant features editor responsible for entertainment, she spends a lot of time surveying the music landscape and sizing up the Valley's festivals and club scene. She's no expert, but enjoys it all — especially artists who resonated in her younger years, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tracy Chapman, Santana and Joni Mitchell.

KATHY LAUER-WILLIAMS enjoys all types of music, from roots rock and folk to classical and opera. Music has been a constant backdrop to her life since she first sat on the steps listening to her mother’s Broadway LPs when she was 2. Since becoming a mother herself, she has become well-versed on the growing genre of kindie rock and, with her son in tow, can boast she has seen a majority of the current kid’s performers from Dan Zanes to They Might Be Giants.

STEPHANIE SIGAFOOS: A Jersey native raised in Northeast PA, she was reared in a house littered with 8-tracks, 45s and cassette tapes of The Beatles, Elvis, Meatloaf and Billy Joel. She also grew up on the sounds of Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw and can be found traversing the countryside in search of the sounds of a steel guitar. A fan of today's 'new country,' she digs mainstream/country-pop crossovers like Lady Antebellum and Sugarland and other artists that illustrate the genre's diversity.